I used to love the winter holidays. Fully. Unabashedly. I looked forward to a festive break from routine at the end of the calendar year, a bacchanalia to precede January’s clean-slate vibes. Even sticky family dynamics couldn’t put me off the season.
Then, I had kids.
Now, every year, just as my twins and I have finally settled back into a school-year rhythm, the holidays arrive and blow it all apart. No sooner are the kids in bed on Halloween night than the two-month run of steadily mounting pressure to spend and plan, the bottomless asks and expectation and want, sets in. Where once there was glee, now there’s dread. The clocks have changed. The dark comes early. Everyone’s feeling antsy and cooped up. Meanwhile, you still have to get everyone fed and into bed every day, do the laundry, check the homework, and pack the snacks. You’ve still got to manage the screen time and your budget and your brother/aunt/sibling-in-law/stepmother’s expectations, all while finding the time to deck the halls and light the menorah and bake the cookies and attend the holiday concert at school and wrap the gifts… And, oh, right, work. The annual barrage of holiday recipes, with their added pressure to innovate and perform, only makes things worse.
Even as I type this, I can feel the overwhelm and exhaustion setting in. I want to crawl into a cozy den like the bears just up the way, tuck myself in, and wake up in the New Year.
At baseline, parenting in late-capitalist America is enough to make most of us feel we’re hanging on by a thread. But parenting in late-capitalist America during the holidays? That’s enough to send even the best-supported, most-resourced among those of us raising children over the edge. And with the heavy shadow of this year’s presidential election heaped atop it all, who stands a chance?
There’s no quick fix for the madness; neither consumer culture nor tradition are easy to intercept. But there are things — workaday household tools and practices, let’s call them — that can offer at least a bit of ballast. The right snack is one of them.
I’m talking about the kind of thing that takes only a few minutes to put together and smells like comfort and calm. Something that can sit out on the counter for the kids (and you) to help themselves to at any point. Something hearty and filling enough to act as a foil for the sugar spikes and crashes that over-excited children and busy adults alike, are especially prone to during the holiday season. Something like banana bread.
I’ve baked many banana bread recipes. This one, which I developed over the last handful of years, is equally helpful, and equally delicious, no matter the season, the kind of go-to that grounds my cooking repertoire as a working mom. But it comes in especially handy amid the holiday hubbub.
I began making a lot of banana bread after my kids’ other parent and I separated. It’s been more than four years now and, in all that time, no matter how many parts-of-bunches of bananas of varying stages of ripeness I buy at the grocery store, I never get the quantity right. Occasionally, my kids go on a banana-eating spree and we run out before they head to their dad’s for three nights. But more often than not, I overbuy, and am left with at least a couple of surplus bananas that, once the kids have switched houses, turn spotty-brown and mushy on the countertop.
In the summer, I peel the extras and sock them away in airtight bags in the freezer to add to smoothies. But come fall, a bumper crop of overripe bananas in my kitchen means banana bread.
This recipe has the components of all classic banana breads — a few mashed super-ripe bananas, some sweetener, fat, leavener, and flour — but it’s been adapted for the things I reliably have on hand at my house: whole-milk plain yogurt, salted butter, buckwheat and oat flours (yes, this recipe is gluten-free, though you’d never know from the taste or texture), maple syrup, and walnuts.
From preheating the oven to putting the loaf in to bake, this recipe takes about 10 minutes of active time. Spend its baking time starting dinner, emptying the dishwasher, or vacuuming the dog hair off the couch before the guests descend.
This loaf is a beautiful addition to a holiday meal, and makes a terrific “serve thyself” breakfast if you’ve got houseguests. In my hectic day-to-day, though, it acts as an insurance policy against hangry afternoons and rushed mornings, and provides an answer to “What’s for dessert?” And when my kids ask for seconds? I can always say, “Yes, you may.” It’s one less thing I have to set limits around, a significant win in my book. Especially at holiday time, there’s more than enough of that that I, and you, have to do already.
I wish, for all of us, a bit of give and grace between now and the start of the New Year. Until then, I wish you and yours plenty of banana bread.
“Yes You May” Banana Bread Recipe
Makes 1 9-by-5-inch loaf
Ingredients:
3 tablespoons salted butter, plus more to generously grease the pan*
¾ cup oat flour
½ cup buckwheat flour**
1 teaspoon baking soda
3 overripe bananas
2 eggs
½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
½ cup maple syrup (Grade A dark or very dark, preferred***)
⅓ cup whole milk plain yogurt
1 cup walnut halves, roughly chopped (or 1 cup pre-chopped walnut pieces, available in most supermarket baking aisles) (optional)
Instructions:
Step 1: Position a rack in the middle of your oven and preheat to 350 degrees.
Step 2: Generously grease a metal or glass 9-by-5-inch loaf pan (using at least ½ tablespoon of butter), making sure to get deep into the corners and all the way up the sides.
Step 3: In a pan set over low heat, melt the 3 tablespoons of butter, swirling occasionally to avoid burning (a little browning is fine; desirable, even). Remove the pan from the heat and set aside.
Step 4: In a medium mixing bowl, use a fork to stir the oat and buckwheat flours together with the baking soda.
Step 5: In another mixing bowl, use a potato masher or fork to smash the bananas until there are few, if any, small lumps. Crack in the eggs, and add the vanilla, maple syrup, yogurt, and melted butter. Using the fork or a rubber spatula, stir vigorously until uniformly combined.
Step 6: Add the wet ingredients into the dry, and use a rubber spatula to gently mix, being sure to pull all the dry flour up from the bottom and in from the sides, only until everything is just combined. (This is a wet and fairly heavy batter, so you don’t want to knock out the air bubbles — thanks baking soda! Nota bene: The “just enough” mixing rule applies to pancake batters, too, especially if you’re using gluten-free flours, which tend to rise less than commercial wheat flours do.) Gently fold in the walnuts if you’re using them, then pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan and slide into the oven.
Step 7: Bake about 50 minutes****, or until the top of the bread is golden brown, sports at least one deep crag, and has begun to pull away from the sides of the pan. A sharp paring knife inserted into the center should come out almost clean (a few sticky crumbs are fine, but if the knife comes out gummy, slide the bread back into the oven a little longer.)
Step 8: Cool the banana bread in its baking pan set atop a cooling rack or cold stovetop burner. Give it at least 20 minutes before slicing. (Most recipes will tell you to turn the bread out of its tin. I almost always forget to, which may be a good case for slightly underbaking, as the banana bread will keep cooking in its pan once removed from the oven.)
The bread will keep, well-wrapped in a cool room, for up to three days. If you haven’t finished the loaf by then, slice and refrigerate what’s left; it toasts up beautifully in a hot skillet with a small knob of melted butter.
*A really good greasing does two things: adds flavor (see, again, salted butter) and helps give the loaf crisp edges.
**I keep both oat and buckwheat flours in my house all the time, mostly because my kids love pancakes, and the go-to everyday recipe I’ve developed over the years uses these — and only these — flours. They’re not fairly easy to find in supermarkets. However, if your local doesn’t stock one or both, you can find them at most online grocers. For extended freshness, I store my flours in zipper bags in the freezer (I keep my nuts, which I buy in bulk, in there, too).
***Darker grade syrups are often a bit cheaper as, to many, it’s less desirable (yet another example of lightness of color being thought superior in North American culture). I prefer them for the depth and richness of their flavor, used for everything for topping pancakes and waffles to, more importantly, baking, where the robustness of its flavor holds against competing flavors.
****Baking time will vary a bit based on your oven and your baking pan; a glass pan will mean a longer bake than a metal one.
Sara B. Franklin is a writer and professor at New York University’s Gallatin School for Individualized Study. She is the nationally bestselling author of The Editor: How Publishing Legend Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America, and has written for publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Literary Hub. She lives with her twin children in Kingston, New York.
Additional photo illustration credits: banana bread photo by Sara B. Franklin
